Kazakhstan

2012

New York, December 27, 2012--Kazakh authorities must do
their utmost to determine the whereabouts and ensure the safety of journalist
Tokbergen Abiyev, who has been missing since December 20, the Committee to
Protect Journalists said today.

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Dear President Nazarbayev: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the ongoing crackdown against dozens of news outlets that appears aimed at driving national independent and opposition media in Kazakhstan into extinction.

New
York, December 6, 2012--A court in Kazakhstan has banned an independent news
outlet on charges of extremism, a ruling that comes within weeks of the country's
election to the U.N. Human Rights Council, according to news reports. Dozens of
other independent and opposition news outlets face similar charges that could result
in their being shut down.

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New
York, November 28, 2012--The politicized prosecution of dozens of independent
news outlets in Kazakhstan is at odds with the country's commitment to press
freedom and deeply stains its recent election to the U.N.
Human Rights Council, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. CPJ
calls on Kazakh authorities to dismiss the case and allow the outlets to
operate freely.

New
York, August 14, 2012--Authorities in Kazakhstan must thoroughly investigate attacks
on two journalists in separate episodes in the past week and ensure the
perpetrators are brought to justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists said
today.

New
York, April 19, 2012--The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns today's
attack on a reporter in Kazakhstan and calls on authorities to immediately
investigate and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Unidentified
assailants shot and stabbed Lukpan Akhmedyarov, a journalist with the
independent newspaper Uralskaya Nedelya, in Uralsk, a city in
western Kazakhstan, as he returned home from work at around 10:30 p.m.,
Akhmedyarov's chief editor, Tamara Eslyamova, told CPJ today. Eslyamova said
the journalist was in surgery late today.

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Igor Vinyavsky, editor of the
independent weekly Vzglyad, was freed
from a Kazakhstan prison on March 15, 2012, on the orders of an Almaty court,
according to news reports. The journalist had spent two months in pretrial
detention after being arrested by the KNB, Kazakhstan's
security service, news reports said.

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The convictions of three men in the 2009 murder in Almaty of prominent Kyrgyz journalist Gennady Pavlyuk was a bright spot in Kazakhstan's otherwise grim press freedom record. The government had yet to reform its media laws in line with international standards, despite its promises to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, or OSCE. To the contrary, the upper chamber of parliament approved a bill in December requiring international broadcasters to register with the government and imposing limits on foreign content aired by local cable carriers. Editor Ramazan Yesergepov continued to serve a three-year prison term on fabricated charges of collecting state secrets after a local court denied him early release. In November, an Almaty court convicted reporter Valery Surganov on defamation charges stemming from an article alleging police improprieties; the court imposed severe restrictions on his movements as penalty. The cases werea sobering reminder of the cost of critical journalism. In April, President Nursultan Nazarbayev won a fourth term in an election so uncompetitive that he took 95 percent of the vote, according to official results. OSCE monitors criticized the restrictive media climate in the run-up to the vote.

Dear President Nazarbayev: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply disturbed by the ongoing crackdown by Kazakhstan's security service, the KNB, against independent journalists. The imprisonment of Vzglyad editor Igor Vinyavsky and interrogations of independent reporters by KNB agents appear to be reprisals for critical reporting on government policies, including a December 2011 confrontation in which authorities killed civilians.